UC Berkeley

This dissertation argues that self-definition should be an important guiding value for the politics of recognition and identifies three principles essential to such a politics: self-definition, responsiveness, and internal contestation. Government officials and other authorities who seek to correct social and political inequality with policies of recognition should use the principles I propose to guide their efforts. We should expect injustice to persist even in the face of widespread, honest efforts to practice recognition as justly as possible, but we must still strive for just practices that support the positive potentials of recognition by respecting both equality and freedom. These principles are drawn from a detailed examination of three central examples of recognition in practice. I examine (1) the Canadian government’s 1988 apology for internment and dispossession of Japanese Canadians in the 1940s, (2) the development of the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s exhibits of Aboriginal history and culture from the 1980s to early 2000s, and (3) the development of the National Museum of the American Indian’s inaugural exhibits in the 1990s and 2000s. These practices of recognition illustrate the importance of self-definition and suggest the above principles practice. As a work of contextual political theory, this dissertation develops normative principles by bringing conceptual conversations in the theoretical world together with evocative contemporary political examples.